


tell me everything (maybe i'll believe)

by theriveroflight



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Background Poly, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriveroflight/pseuds/theriveroflight
Summary: Adrichat November day 22: fantasy AU.They run away for separate reasons and still manage to come together.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Kagami Tsurugi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10
Collections: Adrichat November 2020





	tell me everything (maybe i'll believe)

**Author's Note:**

> And you thought I wouldn't write a fantasy AU? Sike! It deserves more than a drabble - and doesn't go with the established universe I have going.
> 
> Background Marigami/Lukanette -- Marinette is polyamorous and has two hands babey

Adrien has never been particularly fond of being a girl.

But being expected to marry is by far the worst part of that.

So he runs away. He puts on the garment he’s sewn to flatten his chest, puts on clothes that aren’t a dress, and piles what he needs in a bag.

His pet snake comes along for the ride.

He climbs out of the window slowly. There’s very few handholds against the stone wall of the palace, but he’s had practice climbing.

His hands are more calloused, according to those he knows, than a woman’s should be. Lucky that he isn’t a woman, then.

He puts up the hood on his capelet, both concealing his identity and the length of his hair.

Well. Adrien looks at the snake coiled around his arm, a garter snake gifted to him.

Using his Gift would be far too obvious.

So he continues to climb, slowly down the wall.

The night is cool, but nothing that he can’t handle. Being Bonded to a snake allows him some extrasensory vision, but nothing that helps in the dark at the moment. 

He focuses on the peril ahead of him on the wall.

But he can’t help but recall what it was like when he Bonded. Snakes were an unconventional choice — Bonding with an animal was something  _ anyone  _ could do. So, of course, society had its associations with the snake.

And those associations are, in general, not good.

Of course, his  _ father  _ had mostly appreciated the snake for what it represented, at the time.

Perhaps it is in the end a representation of how Adrien has been deceiving them all this entire time — he’s  _ not  _ a girl like they all think he is. He’s a  _ boy.  _ He’s not who he  _ has  _ to be around them.

His name isn’t what they say it is. It’s  _ Adrien.  _ Fitting for an Agreste. Fitting for  _ him. _

Not that he was going to be an Agreste once he made it off this wall… 

His foot touches solid ground. Gingerly, he steps onto it.

There’s one part of this escape down.

Now he needs to get over the moat.

That part will be easy, with a little help from his Gift.

The Graham de Vanily Gift is temperature control. The Agreste Gift is water control.

In Adrien, it manifests as control over ice — though he suspects in others it would manifest as something else.

Adrien freezes the water in the part of the moat he’ll walk on, all the way through so it doesn’t break. He carefully walks across it, though he can hear the sound of water lapping at the ice.

And then he breathes onto it, the exhale melting the ice and letting the moat be itself properly.

He’s out of the grounds. The moat marks the edge of the grounds. He is  _ free. _

Adrien doesn’t let out a whoop at that, but it’s a near thing.

* * *

It doesn’t matter who Chat Noir is. Not anymore.

He left them before they could set him up with some unassuming  _ princess,  _ dainty and gifted and everything else.

(He never hears the name Agreste.)

“Plagg,” he says, “I think I’d rather be a cat, huh?”

Plagg just meows in return. Right. All he got from the stupid Bonding was these dumb cat ears. And tail.

And night vision, which he thinks is  _ pretty darn excellent,  _ but that’s about the only perk of being Bonded to his lazy cat.

But he’s still taking Plagg with him on his escape from the carriages. He’s dressed in all black, even covering his face with a light scarf.

“Time to show them our claws,” he mutters to himself. Plagg mrows from his pack. Chat Noir knocks the bolt holding the door closed out, and dives out of the carriage, running before they can start chasing him.

It’s dark out, and he’s wearing all black. They won’t find him.

But someone else does, after running through the forest for a few moments. He almost bumps into her — she’s in mostly black, with red spots running along her clothes.

“Who are you?” Antennae flatten on the top of her head — must be bonded to some kind of bug. Ladybug, from looking at the outfit. 

“Call me Chat Noir,” he says in return. She rolls her eyes. “I’m looking for a place to rest.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“I ran away. Plus, I have something that can help.”

He focuses, and a small fire lights in his palm.

It’s always been a curse of a Gift. His mother’s Gift light, his father’s Gift lightning — and a son with fire, that could do nothing but destroy. He’s never been able to control his fire. 

He’s just like a dragon.

“Why do we  _ always  _ attract runaway royalty, I swear, what the  _ heck  _ is royalty doing that  _ makes  _ people want to get away?” she grumbles. Then she shakes her head. “I apologize. I’m Marinette, but you may call me Ladybug.”

“What other runaway royals are here?”

“Another one just showed up. One with a Gift for ice, funnily enough.” Marinette chuckles. “Ironic. Fire and ice in the same night.”

“Anyone else?”

“She’s…essentially my deputy at this point, but she has a Gift for air manipulation.”

That…sounds terrifying. And then he remembers — the Tsurugi branch is the one with the Gift of air manipulation.

“What’s your group all about?”

“We’re about giving people another option. Whatever you’re trying to escape…we’re here. No questions asked. We’ll give you a place to stay. And whether you stay with us, or you eventually leave, it doesn’t matter. We’re here for everyone — as long as they don’t discriminate against anyone else. We get people that come and go, those that just check up on us occasionally…it’s currently just Mimi, Viperion, the newbie, and me.”

Kagami Tsurugi, and this girl is calling her  _ Mimi. _ Well, may wonders never cease. “I’ll go with you?”

She nods. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Adrien wakes up the next morning feeling lighter. He runs his fingers through his hair, and it isn’t as long as it once was. He vaguely remembers someone taking a knife to his hair, producing an uneven haircut — but shorter. Shorter than it used to be. And it feels good.

“Good morning,” someone he doesn’t recognize says. He met Marinette and Kagami and Luka last night — this is someone else, someone new. 

“Good morning.”

The stranger looks him up and down. “Chat Noir.”

“Adrien.” He offers Chat Noir a handshake. Chat’s ears twitch a bit, but he takes Adrien’s hand and shakes it. “When did you get here?”

“You were asleep when I came in, but it was still dark.”

The sun is rising, so it couldn’t have been too long ago. “Have you gotten  _ any  _ sleep?” he frets.

“I’m a cat. Nocturnal.”

“You’re  _ Bonded  _ to a cat,” Adrien corrects, the words spilling out of his mouth.

“As much as I don’t like it,” Chat Noir says.

“You’re lucky.” Aspik is still curled around his arm. “This is my Bonded.”

“You have a snake?  _ Cool.”  _ Chat Noir grins, and it’s wild and makes him look dangerously handsome.

“Not as cool when you’re a part of high society and they all think you’re a liar. And you  _ are  _ a liar.”

“You’re telling the truth now, yeah? You have no reason to tell me, a stranger, the truth — but you are.”

“More truthful to strangers than my own family. Yeah, that’s about how I feel right now.” 

“Well, you ran so you could be true to yourself, yeah? Because that’s why I did, too.”

“I was going to marry someone. And I couldn’t, not when I wasn’t going to be a  _ wife.” _

Chat Noir looks up with realization. “I was on my way to marry someone I didn’t know. Someone they thought would restrain my Gift. I don’t know exactly  _ how  _ or who the princess in question was, just that I was traveling to see her.”

Oh. Well, Chat Noir is more admirable than Adrien would have thought of a prince that was forced to marry someone.

“I…mean, I was going to be marrying a prince, because I didn’t come out to them. I  _ couldn’t  _ be myself with them.”

“But now you are. I don’t…I’ve never been able to be attracted to women before. The marriage wouldn’t have gone well.”

Oh. Well, that explains it.

“Am I included among those?” Adrien blurts. It’s not  _ purposeful.  _ But he acknowledges that Chat Noir is exactly the guy that Adrien would want to sweep him off his feet.

“No. You’re not a woman, no matter the circumstances of your birth.” It’s good to know that Adrien has a chance, at least. “And, I mean, I think you’re pretty cool too, but we’re going to have to get to know each other first.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing already?” Adrien asks. 

He hears the sound of yawning. “How are people already awake…?” Marinette.

Kagami, beside her. “I’ve been awake listening to them chatter for the past few minutes. But you got to bed late, love, sleep some more.”

Aside from the sounds of the forest, they can hear the sound of Luka softly snoring.

“Adrien, if you used to be royalty, what’s your gift?”

Adrien runs a hand through the air, collecting water vapor to freeze over his fingertips. “Ice.”

“Mine’s fire. That’s…symbolic, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Adrien says, “opposites do have a tendency to attract.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can go read my other Adrichat drabbles [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27339313)
> 
> Follow me elsewhere:  
> alto-tenure / main Tumblr  
> beunforgotten / writing Tumblr  
> riverofliight / Twitter (inactive)


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